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Critics Pan Nemesis
Reader NCC1701E submitted a short write-up on the movie:
"First, the executive summary: wait for the video. Now, the Gory Details, in all their splendor. I somehow received an email invitation to an advance screening to the Paramount Theater in Times Square, here in NYC. I had to wait in line for 30 minutes, and there was some confusion in swapping my email print out for a pass. But they didn't even check names against a list; it was basically first-come, first served among those who had been inveigled there through various means. In the end, there were even some empty seats. The movie itself? Basically disappointing. IMHO, the weakest entry yet in the series. Production values and special effects were excellent. And it was great to see the movie in a big theater with Dolby sound. But NEMESIS is little more than a Western type "shoot out" movie. The bad guys attack. The good guys fight back, Then, there's more attacking and more fighting back. Then it happens again. And again. You get the idea. I'm a sucker for the hokey humanism that was the hallmark of Star Trek at its best. There was very little of that on display here. In fact, there was very little in the way of a plot. Just some mildly amusing cutesy scenes, plus some murky musings about the nature vs. nuture debate re: a Picard clone. So I didn't much care for the movie. And judging by the subdued response in the theater, neither did the audience. BTW, NY audiences can be cruel. This one snickered at corny lines that weren't supposed to be funny. The phrase "derisive laughter" leaps to mind. I predict NEMESIS will be a huge box office hit. But long-time fans may be as disappointed as I was."
It's easy to remember:
Think about Star Trek V. Shudder. There ya go.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
And there were some very very good reviews of nemesis as well!
...where it's due damnit.
Gabe from Penny Arcade said this exact paragraph earlier in the week about Equilibrium.
Seriously, citing Gabe on this wouldn't effect the moderation you get, and it's pretty lame to steal words just to karma whore.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
The critics aren't much impressed with the new Star trek...
Since when have the critics ever been impressed with Star Trek? I take anything a critic says with a grain of salt.
I am a meat popsicle.
I think "panned" is a relative concept here. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% positive rank and concidering the SF-bias in the media, I think it's probably safe to assume this is an entertaining movie for the average Star Trek fan. I'm sorry to see the Next Generation go.
...now Enterprise can't keep its story consistant with the events of the Kirk era that happen 100 years later.
Far be it from me to be an "Enterprise" apologist, but I remember reading somewhere that there's an official explanation for this in the writers' guide or something. The story goes that when the events of "First Contact" happened, the time line forked in a serious way, due to the fact that Zephram Cochrane (or whatever his name was-- you know, Farmer Hoggett) was exposed to 24th century technology. The time line of "Enterprise" isn't the same as the time line of the original Star Trek, "The Next Generation," and so on.
That's actually kind of a neat idea, and a new and different way of pressing the reset button on the whole Star Trek universe. I really wish they'd taken that idea more seriously, tying the series premiere closely to "First Contact," instead of doing the tired and nonsensical "temporal cold war" thing.
Not that "Enterprise" wouldn't still suck, but at least it would make a little more sense in context of all the other Star Trek stories out there.
I write in my journal
Shatner has talked about this often (more details):
I was at a preview screening at Toronto's Paramount theater. Nemesis is not a great movie, but it's not bad.
There are at least 3 parts to this movie that are outright stupid. The whole audience actually laughed out loud at times. Other than that, it's a decent movie. I just don't think it lives up to the series. I'd rather have spent my 2 hours watching a couple TNG episodes instead.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
OK, look. I know that it's generally considered in poor taste to speak ill of the dead. However, can we please stop lionizing Gene Roddenberry? He may have been the guy who got the ball rolling, and he may have pioneered making science fiction more acceptable and mainstream for the mass media, but he made a lot of negative contributions to the series as well. Allow me to elaborate...
Gene castrated many of the original stories. He rewrote City on the Edge of Forever because Harlan Ellison's version was too grim and dark and harsh for his overly-romanticized B'hai vision of the future. Granted, some of the castration was the fault of NBC, but not all of it. Years later, when Harlan Ellison critiqued Star Trek: The Motion Picture, he commented that Gene only ever had one or two story ideas which he recycled in every script he wrote. The most often used was: The Enterprise crew encounter God, and he/she/it turns out to be a child/simpleton/whatever.
Have you ever read the writer's guide for Star Trek: The Next Generation? I have. I nearly puked when I read the character description for Beverly Crusher. It described her as having, and I quote, The walk of a strip-tease queen. Hopefully that got expunged in a later version of the document. It's this kind of inherent sexism in Gene's vision of the Star Trek universe that really makes me wonder about things, like Denise Crosby's exodus from TNG, or Gates McFadden's season-long departure. (Unkind people have suggested that McFadden left the show for a season so she could take acting lessons, and although I think this isn't entirely off-base, that's a pretty nasty character attack.)
I'm pretty sure that Gene's antics on and off the set colored both the original series and TNG. He was carrying on affairs with two of the actresses on TOS, and rumor has it that wasn't the full extent of his indiscretion. He also tacitly gave his approval (through inaction, if nothing else) of William Shatner's sexual predation on guest actresses on the show. Those who don't know what I'm talking about, check into some of the filmed commentary that the SciFi Channel aired pertaining to guest stars and fans and their experiences on TOS. (They were aired as segments inserted with commercial breaks when SciFi aired the entire original Trek series a couple years back.) Some pretty pointed comments in there from at least one actress who didn't pull any punches.
The utopian vision of the future of humanity would have been a lot better if it didn't get mired in Roddenberry's obsession with the carnal. Yeah, I ate that stuff up when I was younger, but now that I can look at Trek more objectively as an adult, I can see that Gene's influence was severely being moderated by the time TNG rolled around.
Incidentally, for those who have stated that the first couple seasons of TNG sucked, I would note that in at least the first season, many of the scripts were recycled from the pile of scripts written for the never-produced Star Trek: Phase II series. This may have been a contributing factor, especially since some of the dialogue didn't neatly map from the original characters to TNG characters.
HEY! First of all, that's "The adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the eigth dimension", and second of all, its a docu-drama, not a comedy!
Making light of the exploits of the great Dr. banzai...for shame!
;- )
You can't take the sky from me...
As the only film critic on earth who reads Slashdot regularly (not including Slashdot staffers, of course), here's my review of Nemesis.
And yes, it is worse than Solaris
Oh, and the official word from Trekkies who haven't seen the movie yet is that it is awesome and I am an idiot who is "going to hell" for panning a Star Trek movie, per my hate mail.
Cheers.
filmcritic.com - Movie reviews on Internet time
Well, of course. When ST1 came out, people hadn't been adequately warned yet. :)
I know you're trying an old joke at we Canadians expense, but the truth is Canada has a strong naval tradition.
Canada's contribution during WWII in the North Atlantic was huge. From escorting transports to hunting U-boats, we kept the shipping lanes open. At the end of the war Canada had the 3rd largest Navy in the world after the US and UK.
And right now, Canadian warships are stopping and boarding anything that moves in the Arabian Sea looking for Taliban and Al Qaida operatives. One of our many contributions to the "war on terrorism".
So yes, we have warships.